Brand New Warden. Deputy Warden, at Frontenac County

Jeff Green | Nov 27, 2024

Two years after an election that sent 6 new members to the 8 member Frontenac Council, two of those new members are ready to take a leadership role.

The two veterans on Council, Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith and South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal, each took a turn as warden and deputy warden in order to give the new members an opportunity to become familiar with the way both the county and the council operate.

When the annual election for warden and deputy warden took place at the November meeting of council last week (November 20) the only nominee for Frontenac County Warden was Gerry Lichty, the Mayor of North Frontenac Township.

For deputy warden, the only nominee was Bill Saunders, the Deputy Mayor of Frontenac Islands Township. The two men took their oaths of office immediately after accepting the nominations, and the whole enterprise, from opening of nominations to swearing in the new officers of Frontenac County, took under 5 minutes.

Unlike previous wardens, Lichty did not deliver a speech when taking his chair and donning the warden’s chain of office.

He thanked Council for showing confidence in him at the end of the meeting however. When contacted later, he said that he had been approached informally, earlier in the fall, by a member of council, to see if he was interested in the job.

“I told them that I felt that after two years I was ready for the role, but thought nothing of it until I was nominated at last week’s meeting,” he said, in a phone interview this week.

He said that his priorities for the coming year are housing, healthcare costs, and OPP billing, and that the best way to promote those priorities will be through the Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus, which is made up of 13 member municipalities from rural Eastern Ontario. The EOWC meets in January to set its priorities for 2025, and Warden Lichty will be at that meeting.

With the election of Bill Saunders, the council broke with a tradition that has been in place since Frontenac County was reconstituted in 2004 (after 6 years as a Management Board after municipal restructuring in 1998).

Since 2004, only the mayors from the 4 townships that make up the county have served as officers of the county (warden and deputy warden) At first, there was no option as only the mayors served on the council, but when the council expanded to include a second member appointed by each township in 2008, the second members were not eligible to serve as officers.

That was changed in 2021, as part of a debate of the council structure. While some members of council wanted to keep the officer position exclusively for local mayors, Frances Smith argued that there should be no first and second-class members of the council.

Bill Saunders is the first non-mayor to be nominated for one of the two officer positions. The deputy warden often takes on the warden’s mantle the following year. If that happens, Bill Saunders will make modern Frontenac County history again in 2026, as the first non-Mayor to be Warden